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Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
How would that theoretically be testable in court in the US? One would have to sue someone else, right? If you use fair use for personal use, nobody will find out, because you are not sharing anything.
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The personal use side would be hard to detect, much less sue, yes.
But the format shifting by itself might get litigated.
One scenario I can think of is in the academic environment where a lot of the fair use book cases come from or maybe a side effect of a mashup culture lawsuit. Those are not unheard of.
The academic case might stem from the growing dissatisfaction with the behavior of scientific journals so somebody might decide to convert a document or group of documents out of an app-locked system with limited flexibility to an open format for use in a classroom setting. The publisher, say Pearson, which is in pretty tight straits as is, would object and sue.
The court would then have to decide if a legally classroom copy can be format shifted while still being used for what it was acquired. In other words, if format shifting by itself is legal. There have been copyright suits over less.
The fight over TTS comes to mind, which hinged on whether TTS software renders a page or performs it. That was settled out of court so it's still open. That one relates to book readings in public venues.
Another case is the conversion of pbooks and ebooks to DAISY format for accessibility which is allowed under a copyright exemption.
As big publishers see their markets erode they're suing more often these days. Soon enough we'll see a case, I think.